Missions to Venus

  • The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) announced two new robotic missions to Venus: DaVinci Plus and Veritas. 
  • Both missions are part of the space agency’s Discovery Program. 
  • The program began in 1992 to give scientists the chance to launch some missions that use fewer resources and have shorter developmental times. 
  • The two selections are a part of the ninth Discovery Program and were made from proposals submitted in 2019.
  • Taken together, both missions are expected to tell scientists more about the planet’s thick cloud cover and the volcanoes on its surface.
DAVINCI+
  • DaVinci Plus will be the first of the two.
  • DAVINCI+ is short for ‘Deep Atmosphere Venus Investigation of Noble gases, Chemistry, and Imaging’
  • It will try to understand Venus’ composition to see how the planet formed and evolved. This mission also consists of a descent sphere that will pass through the planet’s thick atmosphere and make observations and take measurements of noble gases and other elements.
  • This mission will also try to return the first high resolution photographs of a geological feature that is unique to Venus. 
  • This feature, which is called “tesserae” may be comparable to Earth’s continents, NASA says. 
  • The presence of tesseraes may suggest that Venus has tectonic plates like Earth.
VERITAS
  • The second mission called VERITAS is short for ‘Venus Emissivity, Radio Science, InSAR, Topography, and Spectroscopy’. 
  • It will map the planet’s surface to determine its geologic history and understand the reasons why it developed so differently from Earth.
  • Veritas will be the second one seeking a geologic history by mapping the rocky planet’s surface.
  • The two sister missions aim to understand how Venus became an inferno-like world capable of melting lead at the surface.
  • They will be launched between 2028-2030.

MISSIONS TO VENUS

  • Mariner 2 (1962) of the US was the first mission to fly by Venus.
  • Venera 7 (1970) of USSR was the first to soft land on surface.
  • As of now, Japan’s Akatsuki mission (launched in 2015) is studying the planet from Orbit.
  • India plans to launch a new orbiter named Shukrayaan to Venus in 2024.
  • Because of the planet’s harsh environment, no humans have visited it and even the spacecraft that have been sent to the planet have not survived for a very long time.

VENUS

  • It is named after the Roman goddess of love and beauty. 
  • It is the second planet from the Sun and sixth in the solar system in size and mass.
  • It is the second brightest natural object in the night sky after the Moon.
  • Unlike the other planets in our solar system, Venus and Uranus spin clockwise on their axis.
  • It is the hottest planet in the solar system because of the high concentration of carbon dioxide which works to produce an intense greenhouse effect.
  • Venus has been called Earth’s twin because of the similarities in their masses, sizes, and densities and their similar relative locations in the solar system.
  • No planet approaches closer to Earth than Venus; at its nearest it is the closest large body to Earth other than the Moon.




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